Archives of the
Global Climate Change DigestA Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone DepletionPublished July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 11, NUMBER 9, SEPTEMBER 1998

NEWS...Ozone-Hole Research in Australia

In
the story, Ozone Hole Grows to Record Size, the Sydney
Morning Herald reported on Oct. 1, 1998, the text of which report is
available on the Internet at
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9810/01/text/national22.html,
that scientists at the Australian Bureau of Meteorologys
Co-Operative Research Centre in Melbourne had announced the observation in
mid-September of the largest ozone hole ever over the Southern Hemisphere.
The area of the hole is more than 26 million km2, about three times the
size of Australia. This size is about 6 million km2 larger than the
previous years ozone hole, eclipsing the previous record of 24
million km2, which was set in 1994. In recent years, the annual ozone hole
has averaged between 20 million and 22 million km2. The newspaper quoted
Roger Atkinson, lead ozone researcher at the Centre, that global warming
may be worsening the chemical reactions that destroy ozone in the
stratosphere. The very chemicals causing ozone depletion are also
very strong greenhouse gases, Dr. Atkinson said. Ozone itself
is very important in the climate balance, and so if we interfere with
stratospheric ozone, we may well be interfering with the radiation balance
of the atmosphere. Perhaps we are seeing the first evidence that the two
phenomena, ozone depletion and climate change, may be interacting.